GREELEY — On a spring-like day at Dayspring Christian Academy, quarterback Jared Sanderford had just completed three touchdown passes and one of the most remarkable seasons in Colorado snowman (8-man) high school football history.

He had led the Eagles to a 12-0 record, a 26-8 victory over the Merino Rams and the school’s first state football championship. The 6-foot, 160-pound, 16-year-old senior who played only one year at quarterback was 14-of-22 passing for 198 yards and had no misses or interceptions in the second half, and he rushed 14 times for 35 yards.

In 2008, Sanderford produced 41 touchdowns and 2,817 yards running and throwing. He personally scored 126 points on touchdowns and two-point conversions and as a field goal and extra-point kicker. He rarely fumbled and was intercepted only four times all season.

With Merino — an 8-man dynasty with five titles in the past 10 years — threatening a comeback in the second half Saturday afternoon, Sanderford purposely ballooned a sensational fourth-down 15-yard touchdown to the very back of the end zone. On third-and-16 earlier, he ran for 15 yards, 7/8 inches, then sneaked for a first down. He had hit on passes of 41 and 45 yards as Dayspring Christian constructed a 17-0 halftime advantage before an SRO gathering of 1,000 screaming Eagles and restless Rams on a Big Blue, big blue sky day.

The Eagles averaged 49 points a game this season. In their past three games they scored 62, 61 and 40 points. They had blanked Merino in the regular season 27-0 and, on Saturday, avenged the defeat to the Rams in last season’s state final, when Sanderford was a running back.

Sanderford was homecoming king. He has a 4.0 grade-point average in advanced classes of American literature and American history, physics and Bible studies. He was honorable mention on the all-league basketball team last year and has won in prep track and field meets as a hurdler, a triple jumper, a long jumper, a high jumper and a member of the school’s relay teams.

He is, head coach and dean of students Mick Holmes has said, the young man every father and mother want their daughter to bring home.

And Sanderford likes to cook. His specialty is fudge.

He must be a college football recruiter’s dream.

“This is my last football game. I don’t intend to play in college,” Sanderford told me at midfield moments after the Eagles soared. “I plan to study medicine. I want to be a doctor . . . like my dad.”

Kelly Sanderford is an orthopedic surgeon and Northern Colorado’s team doctor.

“I don’t know where I’m going to school yet,” Jared said.

He will be a university president’s dream.

Sports’ loss is sports medicine’s triumph.

Despite all his heroics, Sanderford said: “Our defense was the difference all season.” The Eagles held opponents to a 13-point average. (In six games of wide- open 8 Ball, the other teams scored eight or fewer points.)

Sanderford, a purist as a passer, could have played 8-man, 11-man, 18-man football and succeeded. “The thought crossed my mind, but I wouldn’t trade my teammates and this experience for anything I could have done at a bigger school. This has been amazing.”

After the loss to Merino last year, “we came together as a team and dedicated ourselves to winning state this year. We had confidence we could beat Merino, a great team, but we had to go out and prove it. My teammates were fantastic. I don’t even know how to describe the feeling.”

So he is flawed. Probably doesn’t always wash behind his ears.

Sanderford and the other 11 seniors who grew playoff beards (sort of) guzzled from champagne-shaped bottles, then sprayed each other and coach Holmes, a former UNC running back and current Bible studies teacher. The liquid was (nonalcoholic) cherry cider.

The Rams, including coach John Barber and his quarterback/son Wyatt, backed off and finally watched another team celebrate. They had won 11 of 13 games, losing the two in the same spot on the private kindergarten-to-high school campus where the crowd eats baked potatoes and brownies.

At game’s conclusion, a Merino fan said to another: “You hate not to win when you’re used to winning, but it ain’t no shame losing to that No. 10. He’s good.”

If only the fan knew how good Sanderford really is.

Now, he can relax and enjoy the football championship, right?

“I start basketball practice on Monday.”

He is the All-American Schoolboy.

At Dayspring Christian Academy, in God and Jared Sanderford they trust.

WASHINGTON — Thirty games into the 82-game NHL season, and nearly six weeks after the Matt Duchene trade, Avalanche general manager Joe Sakic discussed the state of his team before Tuesday’s 5-2 loss at the Washington Capitals.